


The Unfortunate Boyfriend Uncovering

by obsessivemuch



Category: The Middleman - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Ficathon, Friendship, Future Fic, General, Yuletide, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivemuch/pseuds/obsessivemuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the things on Wendy's list of awkward, she thinks almost nothing ranks higher than listening to her roommate go on about her romantic prospects with Pip the weasel as her boss suffers silently at her side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unfortunate Boyfriend Uncovering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ceroate (cero_ate)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cero_ate/gifts).



> Spoilers: "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse"
> 
> Request Details: Characters (Any); Really, I just want a good fast paced bantery story. I ship any variant of Wendy, the Middleman, Lacey, but if all you want to do is a perspective from Ida that would be awesome too
> 
> Acknowledgments: Much thanks to my beta and her amazing ideas for expanding banter, the title, and other details.

"You didn't have to come in," Wendy said with annoyance. "I'm just going to be a minute."

"Nonsense," her boss replied crisply. "The selection of a good pair of socks is not the sort of thing one should take lightly, particularly in a doomsday scenario. You might wind up with a pair of argyle socks, which as you should know, has a tendency to enrage the Clothreeing."

"And I'm sure that's your only motivation for doing so. You know, I doubt Lacey's home," she teased, but she regretted the words almost immediately. "Sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Dubbie. The situation I've put you in is a dicey one, and it's understandable that there would be a verbal misstep or two."

His gracious answer made her feel ten times worse, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that Lacey was not only home but seemed to be engaged in an enthusiastic game of tonsil hockey with ". . . Pip!"

The couple broke apart, Pip's smug expression matched by Lacey's ashamed yet defiant face. "I thought you were working all day."

"I am," Wendy said, gesturing at the Middleman. "I just stopped by to pick up some extra socks." She waited a beat before she added. "Um, my mother always told me to take an extra pair of socks when going into an unknown temp situation."

Lacey stood and crossed her arms across her chest, Pip hovering uncertainly at her side. "Don't let me stop you."

Silently apologizing to her boss, Wendy prepared herself to ask the question that she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. "Is this about the sex dreams again?"

Pip looked intrigued, but Lacey shook her head. "The sex dreams we agreed we were never going to mention in the presence of others?"

"I think we also agreed we'd never make out with Satan's man-child in our living room in the vein of Freudian, mother-defying college experimentation."

"It's not an experiment anymore, Dub-Dub."

"I can see that. You've got to be kidding me. Of all your harebrained ideas, Lacey, this one ranks right up there with your idea to protest outside of the Carnivorous Herbivore." Wendy paused in the middle of her tirade, glanced at the . . . thing next to Lacey, and continued, "No, it's worse. I thought you were done with this, Lace."

Her roommate waited until Wendy was done, drew herself up to her full height, and stared her best friend down. With a surprising amount of dignity, Lacey looked at her companion and said softly, "I would appreciate it if you could keep your enmity to yourself this time, Dub-Dub."

"That's easier said than done," Wendy muttered. "Lacey, he's a plagiaristic bleephole and he has a bleeping stone where his heart should be and he probably kills kittens with glee."

"Hey, I'm standing right here," Pip said with an unusual amount of backbone. Wendy's quelling glance was her only response to his contribution. "Look, I know I did some scumbag things, things that Lacey was glad to list in great detail." Wendy snorted. "But I've changed," he said doggedly. "I'm never going to be some kind of a smarmy do-gooder like Captain Jughead there, but I realized that I have friends for once and I don't want to put my friendships in danger. Besides, Lacey was quite clear that she would not agree to go out with me until I proved it to her."

"You don't have friends." She watched him wince impassively and turned her attention back to Lacey.

"Yes, he does," Lacey said, putting her hand in his.

"Oh, yeah? Like who?"

"Like. . . . well, like me," Lacey said with a spark of certainty. "Wendy, you're my best friend and I would appreciate your support. Can't you just trust my judgment?"

"That was before I knew being supportive meant this," Wendy answered, gesturing at their linked fingers. "I mean, Lacey, this is a complete 180 after the sex dream debacle. You know, when you decided that you had been ridiculous and went back to dreaming about normal fantasy guys."

"It's not like either of us planned it, Watson. When Lacey decided to protest my dad's commercial real estate business, she had no idea that it was the day I was dropping off the rent payments. And I had no idea that I would feel so moved by her words about capitalism and responsibility." The look Pip sent toward Lacey was full of heat and passion, but Wendy's brain replayed all of Pip's misdeeds in an endless loop.

"Like you actually believe in her art," Wendy retorted. "I'm sure the movement you felt was in your pants."

Her boss coughed delicately next to her, but he remained silent. Wendy felt the tension in his body, the one that bespoke his heavy dislike of Pip and his uncertain one-sided feelings of deep love, the result of Pip's plagiaristic actions and that time that he gave up everything that mattered in his life to save the world. Lacey seized on the noise with alacrity. "Oh, hey, Wendy's boss, I didn't see you there." For the umpteenth time, Wendy admired her boss's patience and good-natured acceptance as he stayed away from the conflict. "Can you please tell Wendy she's being ridiculous?"

The Middleman shifted next to Wendy, but his eyes remained focused on Lacey. "Oh, I don't have a horse in this race . . . although I did quite like Perfect Warren."

"Perfect Warren wasn't that perfect," Lacey interjected wearily. Wendy did not know the sordid details of their break-up and she rather suspected that she never would, but Lacey's tears had been endless for the weeks following. It was hard to miss the hand that Pip laid on her shoulder and the strange, affectionate expression of comfort on his face, a hand that made Wendy doubt her convictions. Hadn't she promised to stop meddling in Lacey's love life? Granted, that conversation had apparently never happened, but Wendy couldn't in good conscience go against her promise even if it hadn't ever actually been made.

"I'm not happy about this," Wendy remarked. "But being someone who's had a second chance at love, I can't stand in the way of your happiness, Lace. I just hope you're right about him."

"Oh, Dub-Dub." Lacey threw herself forward, embracing Wendy with gusto. "I knew you'd change your mind."

Wendy wondered darkly if she had actually changed her mind or if it even would have made much of a difference had she not outwardly accepted the situation. Over Lacey's shoulder, she caught Pip's eye and muttered in an uncompromising tone, "If you hurt her, I'll break more than your face."

"I'm so scared."

"If you hurt her," her boss added, "I will see to it that my years of tutelage under the esteemed Sensei Ping will be put to their best and cruelest, and what little of your remains still exist will be be placed in the most far-flung, remote reaches of the planet, so that not even the most dedicated of monks or explorers or body-sniffing dogs will ever be able to locate them." Tension still radiated from his posture, and she could tell that there were so many more things he wanted to say, but he looked at Lacey's arms tucked securely around Pip and relaxed his shoulders ever so slightly. His watch beeped insistently, Ida's hand clearly on the button back at HQ. "We should go, Dubbie."

Wendy hugged Lacey again, noticing that her hand remained entwined with Pip's. She wondered how long they had been hiding their relationship, but the end of the world did not stop long enough so Wendy could pry the dirt out of her best friend. "I'll see you later, Lace. We have a lot to talk about," she said meaningfully. She ran upstairs, grabbed two extra pairs of socks for good measure (she had lost more than one sock last time when they were dealing with the Clothreeing), and returned to find her boss staring at Lacey with the expression that Wendy had once dubbed, "the longing Lacey look." She poked him in the side and waved the socks in his face. "Let's roll, boss." Once they were safely ensconced in the Middlemobile, Wendy dared to ask, "Are you okay?"

"Of course I am," he said briskly. "Lacey is a smart girl, and one who deserves a chance at normalcy."

"What's normal anymore?" she asked rhetorically. "Especially not that hellbeast parading around like he's God's gift to women."

"I'm sure there's a life lesson in here about things not always being what they seem," said her boss, which she thought was far too noble an answer. But she remembered the alternate universe Pip and his goodness – once she thought that should have proved that their Pip was evil, but she also remembered Tyler's heroics and the Middleman's change of heart in that universe. They weren't exactly mirror images of her friends in this universe. "Now tell me what you know about the Clothreeing."

As Wendy nattered on about the distinct characteristics of the aliens, she let her mind wander back to the idea of Pip and Lacey. She suppressed a shudder as she realized that the next suggestion would be a double date with her and Tyler, a thought that hadn't turned her stomach when it involved Lacey and Perfect Warren. Ultimately, she wanted Lacey's happiness more than anything in the world so she was going to have to find a way not to be repulsed by Pip and she was going to have to find it quickly.


End file.
